CD REVIEW
Kristen Key: Where the Cab Takes You
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
By Ryan P. Carey
Kristen Key seems to have shed the self-deprecation of her Last Comic Standing era and embraced her more confident inner party girl on her new album, Where the Cab Takes You. Her set from the Capitol City Comedy Club in her home state of Texas almost makes drinking and getting high sound wholesome, coming from Key who could be a spokesperson for the Waffle House, a PR rep for Jäger, and an advocate for Norml. Despite a heavy “let’s get effed up!” undertone to her comedy album, Key never comes off as the slightest big noir; she’s the sorority girl not quite grown up.
Even when her jokes are blue — she refers to her “lady parts” and even drops the word “twat”– Key somehow escapes sounding dirty. There’s a certain charm to her low-brow sensibility. Her riffs on her white-trash family offers a safer, more detached look at — what Jeff Foxworthy calls — the glorious lack of sophistication, which makes the whole redneck thing simultaneously funny, yet nauseating in too big of a dose. Key comes off as a smart girl explaining the rules of “spot the missing teeth” at the Waffle House. Her redneck humor is reminiscent of Bill Hicks — framed in a way that gives us a break from the up way-too-close and over-glorification of stupidity as a sub-culture and instead opts for a “look what I escaped from” approach.
Unfortunately, Key is guilty of a glaring track that indulges cheap laughs via easy ethnic stereotypes, which I really hope she drops from her act. Not because I believe ethnic stereotypes are essentially bad, but unimaginative profligate jokes about stereotypes are probably bad for comedy as an industry, and this particular track about the behavior of the ethnic food in her fridge is obviously way below Key’s abilities to the point that I was a bit embarrassed for her.
Luckily, the audience on her CD didn’t read quite so far into it and enjoyed themselves regardless, as did I for the rest of the album. There are a few tracks at the end where she brings out a guitar and does a few very short funny songs, almost musical gags more than full songs. The laughs on Where the Cab Takes You are consistent, never really cresting above chuckle, but not lulling for any considerable space on the album. More than anything else, it gets you acquainted with an affable personality who’s an obvious up and coming jokestress with huge potential.
Ryan P. Carey, D.D.S. is a Philadelphia-based comic and senior contributing writer for STAGE TIME. Check out his blog at http://dolphindentist.blogspot.com.
